We don’t have a society of Jesuses and Buddhas, though. We have a society of people who have at least two relevant kinds of impulses:
Impulses to do nice things to other people. If your impulse control is strong, you’ll still do these nice things after you consider them.
Impulses to do mean things to other people. If your impulse control is strong, you’ll not do these mean things after you consider them.
If you’re not impetuous, you’ll do a lot fewer mean things, and at least the same number of nice things (probably more nice things, because after consideration, you’ll realize the benefits of doing those nice things). If you are impetuous, you’ll do a lot more of those mean things, and at best the same number of nice things.
No, there was no relevant “recategorizing of violence.” If you insist on a belief that abortion is violence, then yes, violence has increased dramatically. But if you separate out “violence” against embryos and fetuses, then violence has dropped dramatically for born folks.
Nice theory, but it’d suggest that historically speaking, wealthy folks are less violent. I’ll refer you to any feudal society to see the silliness of that proposition.
Various flavors of abortion have changed labels from illegal to legal. What was once considered murder is no longer considered murder. What was once violence is no longer violence. I would consider that a relevant recategorizing of violence. If tomorrow murder by poison was labelled legal, there would be a corresponding drop in recorded violence.
As Franz Oppenheimer has noted:
I don’t think the theory I laid out would suggest that wealthy people are less violent. If you make a distinction between the above two means of acquiring property, you will realize your wealthy lords in feudal societies were getting rich in immoral ways. That’s much different than today, where property rights are recognized across the board which forces people to acquire wealth through moral, mutually beneficial exchange. (For the most part, there are exceptions)
Maybe it’s the increasing tolerance of homosexuality? I mean if it can cause things like hurricanes and earthquakes, why can’t it cause a lower crime rate? It’s obviously pretty powerful stuff…
Doctors, though not the mothers, used to be charged for that and, to this day I’m reasonably certain that people who performed an abortion without a license would be in trouble, but I don’t think they were charged with murder.
I’ve been saying this for a while – well, not the video games part, because I don’t obsess over video games ;)-- and I thought I was the only one that thought this. :smack:
Seriously, you give base people complete and free (well, just about) access to something that satisfies their base desires, you get a more pacific, less-motivated group. My motivation to do good or be productive has been sapped by porn usage; why wouldn’t it work in the opposite direction?
But it also rings true that a push for tolerance by the media (race, color, sexual identity, etc.) has paid off over time as well. And lead paint? Sure.
I submit that, at least in part (as the trend probably has multiple drivers), it is the inverse of video games: cameras. Freaking cameras, everywhere you go, people are beginning to realize that crime is kind of impractical in a world where you have a very high probability of being recorded on camera right now.
One thing to keep in mind here is that the reduction of leaded gas consumption from place to place was probably very closely correlated with wealth. Most people kept using leaded gas until they bought a car with a catalytic converter. So when they became (essentially) mandatory in 1974, the amount of leaded gas being sold in a given area from then on would have been proportional to the number of people driving pre-'74 cars, and that in turn is going to be dependent on the wealth of an area.
Saying correlation without causation doesn’t necessarily mean a complete random coincidence; there can be shared causes for both, without one causing the other. The lead theory is really interesting, and I think there may be something to it, but I also think it’s possible that implementing a car smog program that necessitated unleaded gas required good economic conditions and an active social-reforming government, and those same factors lead to various improved social conditions and thus reduced crime down the line.
Those would still be classified as attempted murder or at least violent assault however. If that were the case, you would expect to see a rise in attempted murders and assaults but I don’t believe that is the case. All of them are down.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097.pdf?new_window=1
But the biggest issue with claiming that Leaded gas was the main cause is that the only way they hand wave away the other potential causes and over decades the main proponents just keep adding more things to blame lead on over the years without ruling it out for anything they have published.
Now…to fight off the inevitable straw man arguments, I think lead exposure, especially in young developing humans is a very bad thing and I am quite happy the laws have been moving towards exposure reduction. But that mixed with all the “toxins” talk hits my Baloney Detection Kit. Note I realize there are serious ethical issues with “double blind” human studies and that is not what makes me want to look at this closer.
IMHO, one factor people just plainly ignore is that it wasn’t just birth control, Eisenstadt v. Baird was decided in 1972 just two years before Roe v. Wade. Previous to that there was no “right” for unmarried couples to use birth control and a short 7 years prior to that Griswold v. Connecticut was decided which had given married couples the right to use birth control.
Mix in the equal pay act, no fault divorce and you have women and couples gaining more control control of family planning.
There are probably lots of reasons the rate has dropped…and I don’t doubt that the reduction in lead exposure is part of the solution. But I also highly doubt that it was the primary cause.
If I had to guess I would say it was due to a complex mixture of increased education, reduced poverty, increased access to family planning and real family planing information, increased access to recreational outlets and a whole lot of luck.
I hope the whole subject receives more study right now there “answers” are mostly seem to be guesses and pseudoscience.
I am not sure this is so clear cut. Mixed in with the fuel embargos at the time it was very very common to just unbolt the exhaust and smash out the converters’ internals in some odd attempt to get better MPG or power. Gas stations had the adapters you would put on the end of a regular leaded gas pump by the front counter in many states and areas which didn’t have emissions testing.
Add in the reality that lead was a very cheap way to increase the octane ratings and thus tended to be cheaper than unleaded people really didn’t stop using leaded gas until computerized ignition and O2 sensors made it impractical.
You know, I’ve always heard that but I came of automotive age driving old smog-era cars in a state that didn’t do smog tests and the vast majority of cars from that era still at least had the converter intact. I’m guessing sawing out the converter was more common among hot-rodder types. But that’s just anecdotal, I suppose.
In 1986 they mandated a reduction of lead content in “regular” leaded gas, but it wasn’t completely phased out until 1996.
Of course, I suppose another way to look at that is that only scofflaws would saw out their emissions equipment and keep using leaded gas on post-'74 cars. So maybe criminality in an area caused more leaded gas use instead of the other way around.
OK so its settled. The whole leaded gas thing can be explained away but gangsters playing Madden Football and other likely violent offenders “sitting” in front of the computer explains everything.
That’s interesting and looks promising. However, one point in that paper:
Evidently, while they cited the Freakonomics work, they didn’t actually read it. The most conclusive evidence for their theory about abortion is how the downturns in violent crime in the early-to-mid 90’s, on a state-by-state basis, tracked when each state enacted its required response to Roe v Wade. A national correlation wouldn’t be very convincing (yet that’s all they show for lead …)
It would be interesting to see, if changes in lead levels varied per-state, whether they also correlated.
But in any case, the abortion argument would have fizzled out by now; so it can’t explain the whole trend (unless the remainder is due to ITR Champion’s suggestion.).
I like the combo; why does it need to be only one cause?
[ul]
[li]Lead theory means people under 40 aren’t as impulsive and thus less likely to commit crimes[/li][li]Abortion being legal means fewer unwanted babies who are statistically more likely to commit crimes in the first place; most of them would be coming of age of criminality now based on when abortion was legalized in the US[/li][li]High incarceration rates and long-term sentences for many crimes means those who were unwanted babies but not aborted and exposed to lead-based-paint and / or leaded gasoline vapors are over 40 and thus likely already in prison and will be forever.[/li][/ul]
Now if we could just stop this foolish ‘war on drugs’ that nobody’s winning, we’d be way ahead because we’d stop turning non-violent drug “offenders” into violent criminals in the gladiator academies we call prisons.
Um, red faced … I hadn’t read the whole article. Evidently they did correlate the lead with the violence along a number of different axes. So, kettle, meet pot.
My criticism of their not reading the Levitt/Freakonomics study stands.
The Levitt paper linked above is a good one, and lists four contributors:
increase in police
incarceration
demographics
abortion
It lists 6 factors often cited but which they feel are not contributors (or, not shown to be contributors), but lead was not among them, and it seems to me to be a very plausible factor.
